It's rare for a game to come out that's as good as this is, especially when this looks to be your first VN (or at least by looking at your Itch profile it is)!
The story is interesting with a cast of characters that are equally as interesting. The renders are all really high quality and have such great lighting that I was surprised to see that this isn't just your first release but also appears to be your first title!
I've said this about other titles but I kind of hate finding this now and not when it was more developed because I'd love to see more of it right now lol.
Minor bugs I noticed:
At the starts when telling Lucy about us thinking it will be nice to spend more time together the bow and arrow light up red indicating we gained a point with her but we actually don't
Redirecting the compliment toward Lara also pulses red but no points are actually gained
When telling Lucy the truth about our dream it pulses red but no points are gained
Red pulse when selecting "Good thing I like mysteries" but no point gained
Or at least I think they're bugs because those choices were often paired with one that I did see either taking you off the path of that character or losing affection with them.
Thank you for such kind words! This is indeed my first title - I spent long months learning how to achieve high quality renders in Honey Select, so I'm glad to hear it's paying off.
The point system is kind of a work in progress - the behaviour you mentioned is actually intentional in 0.1, but may change in future if I work out a good way to minimise code complexity while maintaining affection points and paths. Could I ask, how did you actually know that no affection points were added? I don't recall indicating this anywhere in the game's UI.
Sure! I use a mod called URM or Universal Renpy Mod in pretty much every Renpy VN I play, it's a very handy mod which allows the player to do a lot. View variables or values, change them if they want to, and much more.
I'll start off with some praise, I came in with no expectations and I left intrigued.
that's all I'll say for now in terms of positives, for now let's talk about the issues.
now when it comes to AVN's there could be a plethora of problems that can kill a game (for me at least) for example the dialogue can be sub par leaving you bored out of your mind and waiting for something to wake you from a boring slog thru a simple interaction, or maybe English was the dev's second language and you have to extract information from spliced together lines that somewhat resemble English but don't really.
another could be pacing, where the story is going full throttle from scene one and leaving the player in the dust desperately trying to figure out who's who what's what and just saying "F#*K IT!" and going and doing something else.
basically normal story issues, this game doesn't have those don't worry. It has something worse!
If you have spent any time on this site in the adult tagged section you'll most likely have come across a certain game called Eternum, this game is very popular and for good reason some even going so far as to say it is the best AVN.
this game to put it nicely want's to be that game, I don't blame the dev. I too would want to make something as beloved as Eternum, heck the game has even influenced some story's of mine that I am working on!
However Eternums inspiration on this game is it's weakness and why I can barely enjoy the game.
saying it was inspired is putting it lightly, saying it was influence would be missing the point, saying this game borrowed from Eternum is a gross over simplification.
this game is borderline PLAGERISM! so much so if Eternum's dev sues, he would have a good chance at winning.
look I'm not one of those guys who hates something because it's a ripoff of something I like, I have played I watched many a game and story the borrows heavily from other stories/games but still manage to make something awesome, but this..... this is pathetic, the starting scene's are so hard to get through because I'm too busy being reminded of Eternum to enjoy this game.
look I can overlook superficial element's of the game, we have the not Eternum cast with Not Annie with her sister Not Penny and their mother Not Nancy guest starring Not Daliah with a special appearance from Not Alex, that I can forgive. There are a lot of games with similar characters and archetypes to Eternum again not even I am free of the sin of unoriginality especially with Eternum.
(also Not Axel appears)
but to bring forth my actual problem let me say this, DreamLink use's Eternum's story to hold up it's own. AND THAT IS A CRYING SHAME!!!
you see Noctus I enjoyed your game I actually did, once I got past the intro it was mostly smooth sailing. the dream world as a plot is fascinating and puts me in mind of Bloodborne, the character's have enough chemistry to make me emotionally invested enough to care when shit was about to hit the fan AND make me disappointed when the end screen hit!
this game has an original plot that I'm interested in but I have to slog through the bit's of Eternum that were lifted from the game and that annoys me it reeks of a fear of originality of taking risks, the same fear big entertainment companies grasp on to that fuels all the unoriginal/sequel/remake/rip-off garbage we see today
in spite of my dislike of the intro I pressed on hoping there was an original game in the copycat and there is, it's just hiding behind the copycat using it as a crutch.
please stop ripping off Eternum and make an original story that doesn't have to use someone else's story as a crutch because I guarantee that will bite you in the ass in the long run,
some advice from me is to redo this section, not scrap all of it and start from scratch but redo the "Eternum like" scenes so that way you can make the story more your own
I might stick around if this goes in a more original direction, I am sorry you had to hear some hash words on your first project, I applaud the fact you even made something like this which makes me envious!
also if not Axel turns out to be Taylor's brother I won't hold out any hope for the future
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, I appreciate the feedback!
All I can say for now is that I hope when 0.2 comes, you'll still be interested enough to try the update and see its direction. I have confidence it'll win you over!
Hey bro, let the developer do his story. This is not the first "Caribdis" inspired out there, and when comparing it to a game like, say, "Marked by Eternity", I feel this game has a clearer idea of what it wants to be, and the things it sets out to do it does to great effect. More originality is not always better, if you don't know how to implement it. If this being heavily inspired by Eternum is a negative for you, that's valid. But that doesn't make heavily inspired things not valid. Some of the most well regarded works of fiction are heavily inspired takes on previous ideas.
my problem is that it was copy-pasting over scenes from eternum and that was very distracting, and yes it has an idea of the story it wants to tell I just want the dev to tone down the copy pasting which it doesn't need, for example why have not Penny appear in the kitchen in that dress? it's a straight rip off of eternum and it was done better over there, there are a lot of scenes at mechanics like that were it's ported over from eternum but without the charm that eternum gave it, and I want more scenes thought up by the dev because those scenes had a certain charm to them, and I wanted more of that.
he has a strength that he has not fully utilized, and I want more of that.
Tldr more originality is not always better IN SOME CASES, but even more so UNORIGINALITY is not always a good thing.
Also did you not read my comment? I said it's not inspired it's basically stealing see the example I gave above.
and again, I didn't say heavily inspired works can't work, Halo was heavily inspired by the likes of Warhammer 40k and Dune and look where it ended up!
Well looks really good I mean even great it clearly took a lot of inspiration from one if not the best visual novel at the moment, hopefully the story may be a little bit different which it seems to be the case, either way great job man, we will continue waching its development with highly interest.
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It's rare for a game to come out that's as good as this is, especially when this looks to be your first VN (or at least by looking at your Itch profile it is)!
The story is interesting with a cast of characters that are equally as interesting. The renders are all really high quality and have such great lighting that I was surprised to see that this isn't just your first release but also appears to be your first title!
I've said this about other titles but I kind of hate finding this now and not when it was more developed because I'd love to see more of it right now lol.
Minor bugs I noticed:
Or at least I think they're bugs because those choices were often paired with one that I did see either taking you off the path of that character or losing affection with them.
Thank you for such kind words! This is indeed my first title - I spent long months learning how to achieve high quality renders in Honey Select, so I'm glad to hear it's paying off.
The point system is kind of a work in progress - the behaviour you mentioned is actually intentional in 0.1, but may change in future if I work out a good way to minimise code complexity while maintaining affection points and paths. Could I ask, how did you actually know that no affection points were added? I don't recall indicating this anywhere in the game's UI.
Thanks for the feedback!
Sure! I use a mod called URM or Universal Renpy Mod in pretty much every Renpy VN I play, it's a very handy mod which allows the player to do a lot. View variables or values, change them if they want to, and much more.
Alright I guess I have to be THAT GUY,
I'll start off with some praise, I came in with no expectations and I left intrigued.
that's all I'll say for now in terms of positives, for now let's talk about the issues.
now when it comes to AVN's there could be a plethora of problems that can kill a game (for me at least) for example the dialogue can be sub par leaving you bored out of your mind and waiting for something to wake you from a boring slog thru a simple interaction, or maybe English was the dev's second language and you have to extract information from spliced together lines that somewhat resemble English but don't really.
another could be pacing, where the story is going full throttle from scene one and leaving the player in the dust desperately trying to figure out who's who what's what and just saying "F#*K IT!" and going and doing something else.
basically normal story issues, this game doesn't have those don't worry. It has something worse!
If you have spent any time on this site in the adult tagged section you'll most likely have come across a certain game called Eternum, this game is very popular and for good reason some even going so far as to say it is the best AVN.
this game to put it nicely want's to be that game, I don't blame the dev. I too would want to make something as beloved as Eternum, heck the game has even influenced some story's of mine that I am working on!
However Eternums inspiration on this game is it's weakness and why I can barely enjoy the game.
saying it was inspired is putting it lightly, saying it was influence would be missing the point, saying this game borrowed from Eternum is a gross over simplification.
this game is borderline PLAGERISM! so much so if Eternum's dev sues, he would have a good chance at winning.
look I'm not one of those guys who hates something because it's a ripoff of something I like, I have played I watched many a game and story the borrows heavily from other stories/games but still manage to make something awesome, but this..... this is pathetic, the starting scene's are so hard to get through because I'm too busy being reminded of Eternum to enjoy this game.
look I can overlook superficial element's of the game, we have the not Eternum cast with Not Annie with her sister Not Penny and their mother Not Nancy guest starring Not Daliah with a special appearance from Not Alex, that I can forgive. There are a lot of games with similar characters and archetypes to Eternum again not even I am free of the sin of unoriginality especially with Eternum.
(also Not Axel appears)
but to bring forth my actual problem let me say this, DreamLink use's Eternum's story to hold up it's own. AND THAT IS A CRYING SHAME!!!
you see Noctus I enjoyed your game I actually did, once I got past the intro it was mostly smooth sailing. the dream world as a plot is fascinating and puts me in mind of Bloodborne, the character's have enough chemistry to make me emotionally invested enough to care when shit was about to hit the fan AND make me disappointed when the end screen hit!
this game has an original plot that I'm interested in but I have to slog through the bit's of Eternum that were lifted from the game and that annoys me it reeks of a fear of originality of taking risks, the same fear big entertainment companies grasp on to that fuels all the unoriginal/sequel/remake/rip-off garbage we see today
in spite of my dislike of the intro I pressed on hoping there was an original game in the copycat and there is, it's just hiding behind the copycat using it as a crutch.
please stop ripping off Eternum and make an original story that doesn't have to use someone else's story as a crutch because I guarantee that will bite you in the ass in the long run,
some advice from me is to redo this section, not scrap all of it and start from scratch but redo the "Eternum like" scenes so that way you can make the story more your own
I might stick around if this goes in a more original direction, I am sorry you had to hear some hash words on your first project, I applaud the fact you even made something like this which makes me envious!
also if not Axel turns out to be Taylor's brother I won't hold out any hope for the future
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, I appreciate the feedback!
All I can say for now is that I hope when 0.2 comes, you'll still be interested enough to try the update and see its direction. I have confidence it'll win you over!
I hope
Hey bro, let the developer do his story. This is not the first "Caribdis" inspired out there, and when comparing it to a game like, say, "Marked by Eternity", I feel this game has a clearer idea of what it wants to be, and the things it sets out to do it does to great effect. More originality is not always better, if you don't know how to implement it. If this being heavily inspired by Eternum is a negative for you, that's valid. But that doesn't make heavily inspired things not valid. Some of the most well regarded works of fiction are heavily inspired takes on previous ideas.
my problem is that it was copy-pasting over scenes from eternum and that was very distracting, and yes it has an idea of the story it wants to tell I just want the dev to tone down the copy pasting which it doesn't need, for example why have not Penny appear in the kitchen in that dress? it's a straight rip off of eternum and it was done better over there, there are a lot of scenes at mechanics like that were it's ported over from eternum but without the charm that eternum gave it, and I want more scenes thought up by the dev because those scenes had a certain charm to them, and I wanted more of that.
he has a strength that he has not fully utilized, and I want more of that.
Tldr more originality is not always better IN SOME CASES, but even more so UNORIGINALITY is not always a good thing.
Also did you not read my comment? I said it's not inspired it's basically stealing see the example I gave above.
and again, I didn't say heavily inspired works can't work, Halo was heavily inspired by the likes of Warhammer 40k and Dune and look where it ended up!
that was amazing, really excited too see how the story evolves and what MC's and the girls' full involvement is. i really loved this!
Thank you so much!
Good game or NTR/ Sharing? ...
No NTR planned!
There can be good games with NTR!
Stop this fake dichotomy, there's no need for it.
No.
Great first release, excited to see where it goes!
How long will the wait for 0.2 be? A couple of months? Half a year?
(PS, the Patreon button on the game page is not clickable!)
Hard to give an exact date, but the target is a cadence of a few months per release! I'll be posting progress updates on my Patreon.
Thanks for letting me know about the button! Fixed now :)
thank you for making this i hope for your success
Thank you <3
Can I play this game in Joiplay?
Have you tried using the Android port linked below?
Will there be an Android version ??
https://koga3.bplaced.net/android-ports-only-quick-mods#DreamLink
Well looks really good I mean even great it clearly took a lot of inspiration from one if not the best visual novel at the moment, hopefully the story may be a little bit different which it seems to be the case, either way great job man, we will continue waching its development with highly interest.
Keep it up with teh great work!
Thank you! Keen to showcase how the story evolves in 0.2 and later :)